Two prisoners speak for themselves, one on the lack of respect for Black lives on the streets and in prison; the other on how prisoners at Georgia’s Forest Hays Jr. State Prison are deprived of justice.
Mental health
Thoughts from the Outside: The idea of freedom
March 19, 2022Dr. Martin Luther King’s reference to the Promised Land was his way of talking about the irrepressible idea of freedom. That idea reaches beyond an individual’s life, and beyond the Civil Rights Movement. KIng was confronting the inhumanity of the economy as well as the war in Vietnam.
Handicap This!: November-December 2021
November 19, 2021Handicap This! takes up an inhuman “assisted suicide” bill being debated in the House of Lords in UK; the working conditions of caregivers; the effects of COVID-19 on government-funded caregiver agencies in Ireland; and the danger the Taliban pose for disabled people in Afghanistan.
‘Care, not jail’
July 5, 2021On June 22, Decarcerate Alameda County called on Oakland’s City Council to move $43 million from the sheriff’s proposed budget and designate a total of $122 million to fund mental health and housing.
LA pits poor against poorer Echo Park houseless
May 8, 2021On March 24, around 200 activists protested against a surprise eviction of the tent encampment in Echo Park. There is antagonism between houseless people and the families and businesses close to them. For poor communities to scapegoat even poorer people is the way that the 1% keep us fighting for space and resources while they throw us bones.
Women WorldWide: November-December 2020
November 29, 2020Women in Lima, Peru, demonstrate against a judge who ruled a woman could not have been raped because of her red underwear; a plaque was given to honor Mary Heaton who spent years in an insane asylum for interrupting a vicar’s sermon; a Nigerian woman started an organization in Italy to support trafficked survivors of prostitution; and in Egypt, the Cairo Criminal Court began hearings on a male university student from a wealthy, influential family accused of rape by hundreds of women worldwide who gave anonymous testimonials on social media.
Review: Women Are Blamed for Everything
A feminist review of a book by Jessica Taylor, ‘Women Are Blamed for Everything: Exploring the Victim Blaming of Women Subjected to Violence and Trauma’ that explores how and why each victim of abuse was always blamed in some way although it was never her fault, even internalizing self-blame.
Mental health strike
March 17, 2020Four thousand mental health workers at Kaiser Permanente HMO held a five-day strike, once again calling attention to a serious lack of resources to provide timely care.
Healthcare workers strike!
December 31, 2019On Dec. 16, 4,000 mental health workers at Kaiser Permanente HMO in Oakland went on a five-day strike, calling attention to a serious lack of resources to provide timely care.
Reducing recidivism
August 6, 2019When someone is arrested again and sent back to prison after being released, it is known as recidivism, and is a huge problem. This article is part of the discussion.
Editorial: Fighting gun violence
March 6, 2019New passions and forces alive in the U.S. ensured that the toll of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year would not fade into the political ether.
The limitations of restorative justice
February 4, 2018Prisoner Stephen Wilson comments on Faruq’s article on the meaning of legal standing before the law and how restorative justice is not enough as the need is for transformative justice which focuses on the structures that create oppression and inequality in the first place.
Handicap This!, January-February 2018
February 1, 2018Santa Barbara’s jail system and sheriff are sued; Texas caps the number of students who can receive special education services; people with disabilities criticize Esther McVey, the Work and Pensions Secretary in the United Kingdom.
Prison danger zones
November 14, 2017A prisoner writes of the danger zone state and federal prisons have become as warehouses for people suffering from mental health issues.
Readers’ Views: July-August 2017, Part 2
July 6, 2017Readers’ Views on Cooperative Form of Labor vs. Abstract Labor; Marx vs. Trump-Putin; Voices From Behind Bars
No to police during mental health crisis!
May 3, 2017A forum on “Responding to Mental Health Crises without Police” heard from a number of local groups attempting to organize our communities to deal with mental health crises.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2017, Part I
January 31, 2017Readers’ Views on: environmental and social crises; Martin Luther King Day; healthcare crisis, Donald Trump and the election; brutal “justice”; and who reads News & Letters.
Handicap This!: January-February 2017
January 29, 2017India: fight for institutionalized women with disabilities; England: cuts to the personal budgets of disabled people; U.S.: standard of education for many disabled children could be raised if Supreme Court rules that they should receive “meaningful benefit” in education; and Transgender African-American woman Kayla Moore, who had schizophrenia, is killed by police.
Handicap This! November-December 2016
December 1, 2016A woman is fired because her daughter was regarded as disabled; how Knott’s Berry Farm had to shut down an attraction giving distorted views of mental illness; the U.S. Department of Labor awarded grants to six states as part of its Disability Employment Initiative.
Voices from the inside out: Wisconsin prisoner hunger strike
September 17, 2016Prisoner Robert Taliaferro writes of the Wisconsin maximum security facility prisoners’ hunger strike to end the inhumane practice of long-term solitary confinement and for improved medical care for prisoners with mental illness in segregation.
Workshop Talks: Why allow Assad to kill the sick?
September 7, 2016Healthcare worker Htun Lin takes up the relationship between workers in healthcare in the U.S. who are told “not everyone can be saved,” and what is happening in Syria where the Syrian government, Russia and Iran are bombing civilians including–or especially–hospitals and healthcare workers.
Handicap This! July-August 2015
June 30, 2015A roundup of actions around disabilities, including the police gunning down of mentally ill Thaddeus McCarroll in St. Louis, MO; a protest against Peter Singer, who called for legalizing killing disabled infants; and how American Airlines forced a woman in crawl onto a plane.
Readers’ Views, May-June 2015
May 3, 2015Letters and comments sent in by readers or taken down, to and about the articles in News & Letters or current events.
HandicapThis, March-April 2015
March 7, 2015Several hundred people blocked streets; Women with disabilities dumped into institutions; Judge hits mentally disabled man.
Workshop Talks: CNA nurses strike to save lives
January 27, 20152,600 mental health clinicians in California carried out a week-long strike over Kaiser Permanente’s “failure to provide timely, adequate care to patients.”
Putting the ‘human’ in human services
August 29, 2014From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters
Chicago—On July 28 I attended a meeting about putting the “human” back in human services in Illinois. Several government officials were invited to hear our complaints, including State Representative Mary Flowers and Michelle Saddler, Secretary of the Department of Human Services (DHS).
The audience, mostly Black [=>]
No new LA jails!
October 4, 2013Over 100 activists held a “no new prison” press conference and rally to stop plans to spend over $2 billion to build two new Los Angeles County jails. Rather than caging people, grant the money to community-based organizations and alternative solutions.
Iranian girls learn bodies not sinful
April 2, 2013In Iran, after the Islamic Revolution the whole issue of sexual health education was forgotten. Years later, a law made it compulsory for all marrying couples to attend a one-hour session at a local clinic on family planning and genetic diseases, including thalassemia— a serous inherited blood disorder.
We hypothesized that offering sexual health education to [=>]
Tasing prisoners
August 13, 2012Kincheloe, Mich.—Recently, as I was awaiting a visit at the Control Center at Chippewa Correctional Facility, I observed three facility staff members around a computer monitor. I heard sound from a video they were viewing of an incident earlier that day involving staff use of TASER-manufactured electro-shock weapons on a prisoner in one of the [=>]
In the belly of the beast
May 12, 2012From the May-June 2012 issue of News & Letters:
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2012-2013
II. In the belly of the beast
A. Occupy and anti-Occupy
The very new phenomenon of the Occupy Movement brought this moment of revolutionary new beginnings squarely to the U.S. Though not now a revolution, it nevertheless transformed the political atmosphere in the [=>]
Nurses demand safety
April 1, 2011Editor’s note: On Jan. 19, after months of inaction regarding the murder of Donna Gross at Napa State Hospital, the workers held a rally. Below we print excerpts from the talks.
Napa, Calif.–As graduating medical students we took an Oath of Hippocrates, with a special obligation not to do harm. Now I am asking the state [=>]